Curt is right. Most retailers probably do not buy directly from AMD/Intel. They purchase them grey-market from companies who do buy direct. The companies that do buy direct buys the CPUs in much higher quantities, such as 10,000 unit. I'm guessing also that most of these companies are actual computer makers who buy whatever quantity of CPUs to get the lower price, and then dumps the unused CPUs on the grey-market at cost (which is less than 1000 unit).